Airstrike in Syria
Airstrike in SyriaiStock

Syria’s civil war killed at least 3,000 people, including 955 civilians in September, the deadliest month of the conflict this year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said on Sunday, according to AFP.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and millions displaced since the war erupted in 2011.

The 955 civilians killed in September included 207 children, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information.

“More than 70 percent of the civilians were killed in regime and Russian air strikes, or in air raids of the international coalition” fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group, said the monitor's head Rami Abdel Rahman.

Backed by Russian airstrikes, the forces of Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad are pressing a battle to retake ISIS-controlled areas in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

A U.S.-led international coalition has been providing air support to a Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, also fighting the extremists in their former northern bastion of Raqqa city and in Deir Ezzor.

The number of people killed in September was higher because of increased fighting and “intensified air raids of the international coalition and Russia against terrorist bastions in the north and east of Syria, but also due to increased Russian and regime strikes on rebel-held areas,” Abdel Rahman said, according to AFP.

The Observatory said the September toll also included 790 regime troops and loyalists, 738 extremists from ISIS and Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a group of rebels led by Al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate. In addition, 550 rebels and SDF members were killed.

Syria’s conflict has killed more than 330,000 people since 2011.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the right conditions exist for the civil war in Syria to end.

Putin made the comments during a visit to Turkey, where he met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The two leaders agreed to push for the creation of a "de-escalation" zone in Syria's key northern province of Idlib to help end the civil war.